"Bad for an army, exalted lady."
"So is obduracy, surely," said his own wife, from her seat near the Empress. She set down her wine cup. "My dear, really. You obviously think the fellow is competent. Appoint him to your private staff, pay him yourself as you pay the others, post him east to Eubulus as your observer for a year-or until you think it is all right for him to be called west and killed in war."
The crisp precision of this in a woman, Gisel thought, looking from face to face to face, must surely be galling to the men assembled. Then she reconsidered, looking at the Empress. They might be accustomed to such things here-unlike her own court, where a woman speaking with authority could be marked for murder.
On the other hand, Gisel had reigned in Varena, in her own name. Neither of these women did. It mattered. It did represent a difference. And as if to underscore that, Styliane Daleina spoke again. "Forgive me, my lords, this presumption. I was ever too inclined to speak my mind." There was no real contrition in her tone, however.
"A trait of your father's," the Emperor said quietly. "It… need not be a failing."
Need not be, Gisel thought. The room seemed laden and layered with intricacies of past and present and what was to come. Nuances coiling and spreading like incense, subtle and insistent.
Styliane rose and made a graceful obeisance. "Thank you, my lord. I will ask your permission and the Empress's to withdraw. If matters of war and policy are to be discussed, it is proper that I take my leave."
It was, of course. No one spoke to gainsay her. Gisel wondered if she'd expected someone to do so. Her husband? If so, she would be disappointed. Leontes did escort his wife towards the door but turned back to the room as she went out. He looked at the Emperor, and smiled. The two men had known each other, Gisel remembered hearing, from before the day when the first Valerius had been placed upon the throne. Leontes would have been very young then.
"My dear lord," the Strategos said, unable to keep his voice entirely steady, "may I ask that all those here be cautioned that this information is to go no further yet? I can make use of the advantage of time."
"Oh, my dear," said the wife at the Emperor's side, "they will have been preparing for you since long before this child fled her throne. Ask her, if you really need to."
Gisel ignored that, both the child and the fled, and saw that Valerius was looking at her, and she realized belatedly that he was actually waiting for an answer to the question he'd asked of her. I trust you will approve? Formality, a coyrtesy, she thought. Such things mattered to him, it seemed. Worth knowing. He would always be courteous, this man on the Golden Throne. Even as he did exactly what he chose to do and accepted-or courted-any consequences that might fall to others.
"Do I approve?" she repeated. "My lord, of course I do," she lied. "Why else did I sail to Sarantium?"
She sank low in obeisance again, mainly to hide her face now and what was in her eyes. She was seeing the burial mound again, not this elegant, lamplit palace room, was remembering civil war and famine, the festering aftermath of plague, was savagely lamenting the absence of a single living soul she could trust. Wishing, almost, that she had died in Varena, after all, and not lived to hear this question asked of her as she stood utterly alone in a foreign land where her answer-truth or lie- carried no weight or meaning in the world.
"I really do not feel well," said Pertennius of Eubulus, spacing his words with care.
They were in a modest room on the upper floor of the secretary's home. Pertennius lay prostrate on a dark green couch, one hand over his eyes, the other on his stomach. Crispin, at a small window, stood looking down on the empty street. The stars were out, a wind was blowing. There was a fire lit on the hearth. On a desk against the wall between couch and window was an assortment of documents, books, writing implements, papers of different colours and textures.
Scattered among these-Crispin had seen them as soon as he'd entered the room-were his own early sketches for the dome and wall of the Great Sanctuary.
He had wondered how they came to be here, and then remembered that Leontes's secretary was also the official historian of Valerius's building projects. In an unsettling way, Crispin's work was part of his mandate.
Why a bison? Pertennius had said, standing unsteadily in the street outside his door. Why so much of you on the dome?
Both, as it happened, shrewd questions. Crispin, no admirer of the dry-as-dust secretary, had come inside and up the stairs. Challenged, intrigued, both? Probably a waste of time, he realized, glancing over at the recumbent secretary. Pertennius looked genuinely ill. If he'd liked the man more, he might have been sympathetic.
"Too much wine of an afternoon can do that to you," he said mildly. "Especially if one doesn't normally drink."
"I don't," said Pertennius. There was a silence. "She likes you," the secretary added. "More than me."
Crispin turned away from the window. Pertennius had opened his eyes and was looking at Crispin. His gaze and tone were both quite neutraclass="underline" a historian noting a fact, not a rival making complaint.
Crispin wasn't deceived. Not about this. He shook his head, leaning back against the wall by the window. "Shirin? She likes me, yes, as a link to her father. Not as anything more." He wasn't actually certain that was true, but he thought it was, most of the time. Think of her fingers slipping your tunic up from behind and then sliding back down along your skin. Abruptly, Crispin shook his head again, for a different reason this time. He hesitated, then said, "Shall I tell you what I think?"
Pertennius waited. A listening sort of man, privy to much: in his profession, by his nature. He really didn't look well. Crispin suddenly wished he hadn't come up here. This — wasn't a conversation he wanted to be having. With an inward shrug and a flicker of irritation that he was being placed in this situation-or had placed himself in it-he said, "I think Shirin is tired of being beset by men every time she steps out-of-doors. It makes for a difficult life, though some women might think they want it."
Pertennius nodded slowly, his head heavy on his shoulders. He closed his eyes, struggled to open them again.
"Mortals seek fame," he said sententiously, "unaware of all it means. She needs a… protector. Someone to keep them away."
There was truth to all of this, of course. Crispin decided not to say that a secretary and historian was unlikely to prove sufficient deterrent as an acknowledged lover to achieve that protection. Instead, he murmured, temporizing, "You know there are those who have commissioned love spells from the cheiromancers."
Pertennius made a sour face. "Fob.!" he said. "Magic. It is unholy."
"And it doesn't work," Crispin added.
"You know this?" the other man asked. His eyes were briefly clear.
Aware, suddenly, of a need for caution, Crispin said, "We are taught by the clerics that it doesn't, friend. "Irritated again, he added, "In any case, have you ever seen Shirin wandering the streets before dawn against her will and desire, her hair unbound, compelled to where some man waits in his open doorway?"
"Oh, Jad!" said Pertennius, with feeling. He groaned. Illness and desire, an unholy mix.
Crispin suppressed a smile. Looked out the partly open window again. The air was cool. The street below was empty and silent. He decided to leave, considered asking for an escort. It was not particularly safe to cross the City at night alone and his own house was a distance away.